Coding IS Part of Web Design

Posted in Design Education, Rants, Web Design

My recent post, 50 Common Web Design Mistakes elicited this comment from Wild over at Digg:

These are programming mistakes. Not DESIGN mistakes.

Maybe I sound a bit arrogant, but their [sic]is a difference between a web designer and a web programmer. Its [sic] one the industry needs to understand as it leads to a lot of confusion when it comes to hiring people.

I suppose, if my definition of web design was limited to arranging pixels, I might agree with him but there is more to web design than making pretty pictures on a monitor. According to (who else) Wikipedia, design

…normally requires a designer [to consider] aesthetic, functional, and many other aspects of an object or process…

It’s the “functional, and many other aspects” of web design that people like Wild ignore. In this area I grudgingly give credit to the “experience design” movement for recognizing that the ultimate purpose of design is not to create a printed piece of paper, an attractive arrangement of pixels or an imposing building. The purpose of design is to create an interaction with, or experience for, the end-user using those created objects (real and virtual). Read the rest of this entry »

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50 Common Web Design Mistakes

Posted in Rants, Web Design

This started out as a “Top Ten Newbie Web Mistakes” for my beginning web design students but it quickly became obvious that I couldn’t limit it to only ten. I was finally able to edit it down to 50. But I suspect, as soon as the comments start, it will begin growing again.
And, yes, I’ve [...]

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WTF is Experience Design?

Posted in Rants

I’m a bit behind in my design jargon, so I have to admit that this “experience design” thing kind of crept up on me. I probably would have blissfully ignored the whole phenomenon if I hadn’t discovered that the local AIGA design awards offered eight categories for ink on paper and grouped everything else – [...]

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